Hate Him Again
by meganarcissa
Summary: Tahno can't help but begin to feel numb to everyone else. Korra's the only one who can manage to bring him back. T for mentions of sex.


When he's with her, it's as if every inch of his skin is going up in flames. But without her, he is empty.

At the beginning it was nothing, unimportant. She was just a temporary coping mechanism when he'd lost everything he'd ever love in a single touch. She didn't mean anything to him, just figure that fit against his when he needed it.

But then he found himself slipping. The rest of the world was becoming hazy, and distant, and the only thing that could bring him back was that crazy Avatar and the way she could make him feel like he was more alive than he'd ever been.

They are waterbenders. They are supposed to mold and melt into each others' touch like sand, but instead there's resistance. She pushes him to where he's never been and he has no choice but to shove right back at her, with everything he has, cause she just drives him that crazy. Her touch isn't gentle, not at all. He can always feel the rough calluses across her fingertips when she rakes them over his skin. They collide back and forth like the slap of the tide over the sand. It's not pleasant but at the same time he yearns for it, pines for the way he wakes up with purple splotches that will have him sore for days.

After all, it's not softness he's going to her for. It's not sympathy. It's not warmth. He's already getting that from all other sides and he's sick of the way people think they have the right to pity him. The pats on the backs all blur together and after long days of being miserable all he wants is to feel _something_.

So every night he goes and makes her hate him.

It works, mostly. She hates him. That's the easy part. It's harder getting through to his own heart.

He tells himself lies, and that helps. Lies like spirits, he hates her, hates the way he doesn't mean more to her than anyone else and hates how naive she can he sometimes and hates the way that he can't stop coming back to her no matter how much he hates her. Hates the way she draws him in like a Siren and then tears him up. He hates that she thinks she'll break him even though as much as he hates to admit it he'd already do anything for her.

He hates that she's always right and he hates that sometimes she actually feels sorry for him. He hates that she isn't just a body, a faceless whore, and that she's actually _Korra_, all of Korra, a real person in all her temper and impulsiveness. He hates how she's always smiling, even when his flesh has melted away from his bones and he's so far past gone that he knows nothing but her, she's smiling down at him. He hates that she doesn't even know what she does to him. He hates that she smells like home.

Sometimes in those few moments when they're not boiling over, she wants to talk. A tiny part of him would love to just sit forever and listen to the way her voice flows across his skin. But in the midst of the one-sided conversation he begins to fade away once more and he can't stay any longer or else he'll become numb once more.

So he'll start a fight. And spirits, it's easy to get her mad and that's another one of the things he hates about her, that she can't see past everything and realize that fighting isn't what he wants, not really. But it's better to hate someone to feel nothing at all.

If he can't bring himself to start his own fires, he'll leave. That was the last time, he always promises, I won't go back to her. I don't need her. I don't need her.

But alone, he's numb. Like he's underwater and the rest of the world is above it, and he can't quite hear them. He doesn't want anything to do with them anyways, but he wants _something_, and the edges of his lukewarm thoughts ways seem to be skirted by stormy grey eyes and the curve of lips and the way her hair falls across her face when she undoes it.

And he can't stay away long.

So he always goes back. Pain is better than nothing, even the pain that bubbles in his chest when he realizes he wants to be what the firbender is to her. It all turns into hate in the end. Even to love is to hate.

He always returns, to make her hate him all over again.


End file.
